Thursday, October 05, 2006

To address some issues with spell rarity and location I made the following changes to spell drops:

Effectively doubled the rate that spells drop

Changed it so that each NPC that can drop spells can theoretically drop 4 spells at a time (although the odds of getting 4 spells are very very very very remote)

Changed it so that each NPC that can drop a spell of a given level can now drop all spells from that level. So instead of one spot to get a level 72 Mage spell, you can now go to any spot that drops level 72 spells and potentially get a Mage spell.

We hope that this will address any issues with the spell drops. The expansion is still very young so it will probably be a while of watch-and-wait before we make any further changes to how spells drop in TSS for Teir 2.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

We have a fix for the issues reported in the 9th step of this task currently on the Beta server. Beta players who were copied over and on this step report that they can now progress to the rest of the quest. After the fix is verified by QA we can look into getting this copied out to the Live servers. When I have an ETA I'll let you know.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

- /raid commands should now work appropriately.- Added /decaycorpse command on The Combine and The Sleeper. You can now target and manually decay any of your own corpses that no longer have items on them. Please help us keep Norrath clean of unnecessary corpse litter.- Fixed a bug that would cause ground items to not respawn appropriately.

The main reason for this mornings update was to upgrade our hardware (although we did slip in a few minor things). Our operations team is working very hard to get this done but we are going to have to push the server uptime another hour to 11am PDT. Sorry for the delay. - Raghnell, EQ Producer

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

In the last patch I increased the distance from basecamp the Dwarves have to be before they return to full strength. It's about midway from basecamp to position one so if you move them to a position and then attack from there they'll be full DPS. If you pull the Giants to basecamp they'll do a lot less DPS.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

SAN DIEGO, CA – July 10, 2006 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced EverQuest® The Serpent’s Spine™, a new expansion for the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMOPRG), EverQuest. EverQuest The Serpent’s Spine will only be available via digital download beginning in September for the suggested price of U.S. $29.99.

“In an ongoing commitment to introducing new features into EverQuest, The Serpent’s Spine introduces the Drakkin, the first new player race since the Frogloks were added to the game seven expansions ago,” said Chris Sturr, Senior Brand Manager, Sony Online Entertainment. “In addition to the new race, players of all levels will benefit from this expansion, as we are including content for levels 1 to 75.”

Players will also be able to explore a new starting city, Crescent Reach, which contains merchants, quests and combat. As in the last expansion, there will be new dynamic features such as auras, traps and destructible terrain. Players will be able to reach level 75 with new spells, raids and abilities.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Some NPCs are likely hitting for more and others for less than before the patch. The change involved switching old world NPCs over to newer systems. Old NPCs all had hand-set values, which led to a lot of variance from NPC to NPC even within the same level range due to different designers making different NPCs (the dreaded "under con"). It also made it very difficult to tune since each individual NPC has to be tracked down and changed if you decide a certain range of NPCs needs to be adjusted.

Under the newer system, NPCs of the same level start with the same baseline values and modify from there based on the NPCs capabilities and class (warriors have more hps, giants hit slower and harder, werewolves are vulnerable to fire, golems have low intelligence, etc.) so depending on what the NPC was set at before, it may have gained or lost damage dealing capabilities in the conversion or it may be dealing similar damage, but in a different fashion (hitting harder, but slower for instance).

This only affected NPCs who weren't already on the new system, which is basically NPCs from Original EQ, Kunark, Velious, and Luclin. It was also limited mainly to NPCs below level 50 and excluded event NPCs, which have to be tuned case by case regardless.

If you come across any particular NPC that seems to be way out of line compared to other NPCs of the same level around it, feel free to call it out and I'll go have a look. I'll just need the zone and the full name of the NPC to find it.

In the last few years, much has changed in the world of EverQuest, which is a great thing for all of us -- It's what keeps us all interested in the game and enjoying the time we spent playing.

In developing a server like this, we have to be mindful and aware of those changes such that we can make an informed decision on what course of action to take when addressing any issues as they come up. As you might imagine, there are years worth of content to be aware of, enough so that some of the changes require a lot of time.

The change that I'm about to explain makes huge strides towards dealing with what you guys feel is one of the biggest issues to overcome for this server. This same change is also why I've been largely unavailable for the last week or two. The change is not small, affecting a great portion of EverQuest and it's NPC's, nor is the change to be taken lightly, needing as much testing time as you guys are able to muster. If you have a character and haven't participated in beta for a week or two, I'd encourage you to please log in and test everything out.

With that said, the changes that have been made are going to affect a number of NPC attributes in an effort to address the power disparity between melee-classes and caster-classes in the early stages of progression on these servers. So, without further ado...

NPC Health - This has been increased on average for most NPC's. NPC Armor Class - This has been reduced on average for most NPC's. NPC Overall DPS - The overall dps done by NPC's has been reduced slightly on average for most NPC's.NPC Damage - This has been reduced on average for most NPC's.NPC Melee Speed - This has been reduced slightly (meaning they hit faster than previously) on some NPC's, though most will be roughly the same.NPC Resists - This remains largely unchanged, staying the same on average for most NPC's.

NPC Effective Spellcasting Level - In the last year or so, PC spells got a pretty big boost in power, which means that NPC's also got a pretty good sized boost in power as well. I think the best way to address this is to get a means to specify an NPC's spellcasting-level independent of it's actual level.

As an example, this means that I can now tell a level 50 NPC to only cast level 42 and lower spells, without changing the NPC's level at all. With this functionality, I can reduce the spellcasting power of the NPC's without reducing anything else. With this change, you should see a very noticeable change in the NPC's spellcasting power, particularly in the level 25 to 40 range.

DISCLAIMER : Given the nature of these changes, I'm speaking of an 'average', so there will be situations where an NPC or small group of NPC's that now resist more now than they did previously, likewise you will see situations where an NPC or small group of NPC's will resist less now than they did previously. This applies to all of the information listed above.

I've made these adjustments to about 70% of the NPC's so far and that data will be hitting the server this afternoon. There are still some NPC's that have not been fully converted yet, so I'll post when those are done as well.

There's one more thing that I have on my plate to do to address some of the melee concerns (that I'm sure will be posted in this thread), so stay tuned and please throw as much testing as you can at this change.

This change has reportedly happened on all live servers, not just the progression ones. Changes have happened to many NPCs in most pre-PoP zones. Resistances are reported to have increased as well.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

- Fixed a crash while trying to search the bazaar when not using the default UI.- Fixed the problem with AA experience being reset when you enter monster missions or use a shroud.- Fixed a bug with some tasks not being available to be given out to players.- The ‘;’ chat commands should now work again.- Setting a chat window's default channel to a chat channel (instead of say, group, raid, ...) will now broadcast the chat to that channel.- Fixed a problem that was causing the Concentration AA to not function properly.- We've reverted the fix to channeling made with the last patch. After much discussion, our general feeling is that channeling has been broken for long enough that players have come to rely on that broken behavior as expected gameplay. For the time being, we've reverted back to that broken behavior and will address spell interrupts in general at a later date.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the new Hot Zones released with the update this week. Now that the first players to hit the zones have had a few days to run through the content I wanted to discuss what some of you have already noticed, namely that there are some new items dropping in each of the Hot Zones.

This is something that we've wanted to do for some time now. I very nearly was able to itemize the Hot Zones that went live when PoR came out but we just weren't able to complete the items before that set of zones went live. Rather than tack on the items partway through the Hot Zone period I decided to hold off until we released the next set of items. This is not by any means a complete re-itemization of these zones and does not mean they were "revamped" in any way. New items were simply added to the zones in a variety of ways that I will discuss below.

The first and most obvious source of items in the new zones are the new named NPCs to be found in all of the Hot Zones. Some zones have more new named npcs than others but each zone should have at least one new npc. These NPCs have brand new drops that should be a bit more level appropriate for current day EverQuest than some of the items that might drop elsewhere in the zone and are older.

The second source of items are global rare items. A number of the Hot Zones have new global rares. In some zones nearly any NPC can drop these items. In other zones the global rares are restricted by race so only certain types of NPCs drop these items.

The final loot mechanism I used in the Hot Zones is something new I came up with for these zones - feedback is welcome! I did something I call the "Call for Help" mechanic. Basically it works like this....

Some (not all!) npcs in the Hot Zones will, during combat, realize they are in trouble and are not going to win. If they decide to call for help at this point a new NPC will spawn somewhere nearby. This NPC will be the same race as what you're fighting but will be just a little bit stronger. This new NPC will then run over and, well, start hitting you. Obviously a new NPC hitting you isn't fun so the up side to this is that the new NPC is a Named npc with loot that essentially spawned just for you and your group.

The chance of this happening is about the same as the chance to get one of the global rare drops found in the Hot Zones.

I'm hoping that this will add a bit of excitement and danger to normal experience grinding while offering a chance at some nice items in the process.

I hope you all enjoy the items and the zones in this set of Hot Zones.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

We fixed a problem with channeling that was causing it to basically be backwards. If you had no AAs, you channeled through damage 100% of the time and as you got AAs, that decreased. It now scales like it should, and like how it worked in the past, where you start out low, channel more often as you gain channeling skill, and your AAs increase that even further. You're going to see more interrupts than before simply because you are no longer channeling 100% of the time (or close to that if you had AAs that were decreasing it). Your chance to channel is still really high at high levels (it caps at 90%), though, assuming you have maxed channeling skill.

One caveat to this...channeling doesn't apply to being bashed, stunned, or moving. Even with a high channeling skill, if you get bashed, stunned, or moved too far, you're going to lose your spell. That hasn't changed.

The bug dates back at least a year. For the time being, we're going to re-break channeling, putting it back to where it was before the patch, so you'll channel through damage 100% of the time if you have any channeling skill at all. Rather silly, but at this point its expected gameplay. The only difference from before the patch to after is that channeling AAs won't actively reduce your chance to channel...they just won't do anything at all for the time being.

In the near future, I'm going to take a look at the whole interrupt system and likely make some significant changes to it. At that point we can make channeling actually mean something again as part of the larger interrupt change.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Combine (Progression Server) will be available on May 31st for all current subscribers to log in and reserve a name for the launch on June 28th. The Combine server will open between 10am and 12pm PDT for name reservations only and will remain open until June 26th. Only one character per account will be allowed.

When the server goes live you will be able to fill all 8 character slots but for the sake of fairness we are limiting the pre-launch naming to a single character per account. Keep in mind that until later expansions are unlocked, Iksar, Frogloks, Vah Shir, beastlords, and berserkers will not be available for character selection.

Naming Server Fact Sheet

Opening: May 31st between 10am and 12pm PDT Closing: June 26th Character Limit: Naming will be limited to a single character per account although the live server will allow the full set of 8. Race Limit: Iksar, Vah Shir, and Froglok are not available. Class Limit: Berserker and beastlord are not available.

You can get to The Combine to reserve your name once it is available as you would log into any other server on the main Live Server Select screen.

Friday, May 26, 2006

This post is just another reminder to folks that we've updated the Test server to use the April release DirectX 9.0c. Note there is a little bit of confusion about which specific version of DX9.0c you need; there happens to be a couple of different versions of DX9.0c and to make a long story short if you aren't sure which specific version of DirectX 9.0c you have installed, please just visit the microsoft DirectX update site to be sure your system is fully up to date. While it's a little confusing to everyone that there are multiple releases of DirectX 9.0c, it is a thankfully simple process to just go to the microsoft site and update automatically (I have no idea why Microsoft didn't update the visible version numbers, sorry).

Please note that with the next update to live servers players will be required to use a version of DirectX released in April or later.

For anyone interested in why we are updating, it is because there have been a good number of bug fixes in DirectX 9 since the version currently in use on Live servers. The latest version also provides some very useful diagnostic tools to help us continue to improve the stability & performance of EverQuest. This is not a significant update to the code; pretty much all that had to change from a code standpoint to support the latest DX was shader API related.

Our compatibility lab spent a lot of time testing all the the permutations of supported hardware (which is a lot of time & hardware) and so far neither QA or the players on Test have reported any problems with the DirectX update. That said, if you want to be certain your system will not have any problems related to the DirectX update when we patch live servers, I recommend you log in to the Test server and verify your system allows you to log in and play with no obvious visual artifacts. To the best of our knowledge, updating DirectX to the latest version will not affect your ability to play on Live servers and in fact we believe a significant portion of the player base is already using the correct version. We are optimistic this will be a smooth update, but it's always good to get more people confirming the results so if you're able to get on Test to check it out please do.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Quick announcement: the 8 year veteran reward has been decided! It's called Throne of Heroes and will port 8 year vets directly to the throne room in the guild lobby. ToH will be similar to Origin in regards to its casting and reuse timers. To accommodate this new ability, the guild lobby and its amenities will be made available to everyone, even those who are not yet flagged for Dragons of Norrath.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Fanning the Flames (Tirranun raid) - The lava spout traps were removed.Demi-Plane of Blood - Tether added to Mayong Mistmoore.Deathknell - Ability to feign and stun the tank was removed from the Deathknell Enforcers.Trakanon's Teeth - Can now launch and enter the Kunark monster mission raid with only one person needing to be flagged.Hollowshade Moor - The war should be working again.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

I've mentioned this in the past, but have now made the taunt changes in code. They'll be going to test soon and I wanted to let everyone know what changes are being made. The changes are mostly relevant at high levels, where taunt was really a problem, and consist of the following:

Above level 60, taunt will use your taunt skill now instead of being a hard coded success rate. Before these changes, your taunt skill was irrelevant if you were above level 60 and taunting something that was also above level 60. The chance to taunt is roughly the same if you are max skill as it was before the change.

To go along with this, Paladin and Shadowknight now have the same taunt caps as Warriors. Previously, since the taunt chance was hard coded, they were taunting the same anyway so this ensures that the 3 tank classes keep that equality.

The chance to taunt an NPC higher level than yourself dropped off at double the rate if you were above level 60 than if you were below level 60 making it very hard to taunt creature higher level than yourself if you were above level 60. I've removed this check so the drop off happens at the same rate at all levels now instead. This will improve taunt success rates against yellow and some red con NPCs at high levels.

The mininimum chance to successfully taunt an NPC has been increased.

You now gain a bonus to your chance to taunt an NPC that is lower level than yourself with that bonus growing as the level difference increases.

Rashere

Oh, one additional note I probably should have included in the original message.

Changing taunt is what I refer to as a "scary change". It's one of those systems that by itself doesn't do a whole lot, but affects a ton of other aspects of combat. Changes to systems like this have a rippling affect on balance throughout the game and no matter how many tests we run, we just won't see the full impact until its being used on a large scale. The changes I've outlined are what we are anticipating will work best, but I'm expecting we'll be making tweaks over the coming months as we see how it really plays out in true game conditions. When this hits test, I encourage people to log on and try it out as much as they can.

Monday, April 24, 2006

It seems that Redfang will not reset if the raid wipes under certain conditions.

Here is a post by Prathun, EQ Designer, on April 24, 2006:

Well, Redfang would reset if he were up for 10 minutes, but he's only up for 4. Each time he depops to disappear it resets the counter. This is now fixed on Test and Beta. I've stored the depop counter in a different location.

Vishtamar has a DoT, it's a real tank killer, called Vishtamar's Corruption. Reduces AC by 600, decreases Aggro by 95% and changes max hp total by -75 and lasts for 5 minutes.

It is blocked if you have Steeloak on you.

Post made by Prathun, EQ Designer, on April 24, 2006:

Vishimtar has always had that spell.

I'll check on the stacking and see if it is getting blocked by a buff. At this point, the fight's hard enough without adding in any extra complications. I'd rather just remove the effect than "fix" it and drastically increase the challenge of an already difficult battle.

You know, this kind've reminds me of when we were doing 6th anniversary fabled events. While looking at Venril Sathir, we discovered that he had 2-3 unique detrimental spells created specifically for his fight that he can't cast. They've never worked because they cost mana to use and he doesn't have any.

Friday, April 21, 2006

The traps in Inktu`ta and Fanning the Flames (Tirranun) are making those fights much more difficult than I had intended.Fixing this will probably simply mean making the traps much easier to disarm. Sorry for the inconvenience and I'll have a look at this as soon as possible.

-Prathun

Posted by Prathun, EQ Designer, April 24, 2006:

For the traps in Inktu`ta, I made them much easier to sense and disarm. You should hardly ever fail against them. Also, they were firing off 2.5x faster than they were originally, so I lowered the frequency of how often they can cast back to what it should have been.

For the traps in the Fanning the Flames instance, I removed them entirely. The new trap system has made it impossible to recreate the effect I was trying for.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Spell procs, including GM and AH, now work similarly to how normal procs do. The change was to allow all spell procs to continue processing if the first one failed and there are other ones that can still be triggered. It tries one first and if that fails, tries the next until it either runs out of ones to try or one succeeds. Order is based on "greatest effect" like other focus effects. In this case, greatest effect is determined by the chance to proc so one with a high chance to proc takes precedence over one with a lesser chance to proc.

Rashere

Here is the report about it being still broken:

Few things...

First, as others noted, it looks like GM/AH is still not working properly on live servers. I did some checking and it looks like while the data side of the fix is there, the code to support it didn't make it into the patch to live servers. I'm working with the coders to schedule a patch to correct this issue, so hopefully we can get it resolved soon.

Second, the breakdown of AH and GoM proc rates is as follows:

AH (1) - 2%AH (2) - 4%AH (3) - 6%AH (4) - 8%AH (5) - 10%

GoM (1) - 3%GoM (2) - 6%GoM (3) - 10%

Third, like combat procs, you can get a proc from spells, items, and AAs in a single cast...but only one of each. It's possible to proc up to 3 spells on a single cast if you were to proc one from each.

Rashere

More here:

When the chances are the same, it comes down to how they are read into the list. Whichever one is read in first gets processed first. I'm not 100% sure on that order, but its based on how they're stored in your character file. Since AH was blocking GoM before, its likely safe to assume that AH generally gets read in first.

The proc chances are whole numbers only, so I can't make it 10.1 or 9.9. Even with both at max ranks, though, its only a 1% reduction in the proc chance for whichever one is coming second.

Rashere

Update: April 20, 2006

We usually have dozens of code changes going on at any time, so when we want to put something live, it has to be manually added to the live code. In this case, we had a lot of things we didn't want to include because they aren't ready to go out yet and mistakingly missed adding the code part of the spell proc fix to the patch. It's been working on test for a while now...it just didn't get added to the patch to go live. So, I apologize. We know its a big issue for a lot of folks so we're going to patch tonight specifically to add this fix to the live servers.

Regarding the interaction of AH/GoM, while the actual in-game impact of having AH check before GoM is minor, I can understand the psychological implications and am willing to lower AH by a percent across the board to ensure that GoM always checks before AH does. That change won't go out until our next large patch, though.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Certain mobs have been not showing up on track. When players mentioned this, here was the reply -

From Rashere, Lead Designer of EverQuest on April 13, 2006:

"There's a rationale for non-trackable mobs? Personally, I abhor them and fix them whenever I find them. The only things that should be non-trackable, imo, are NPCs you couldn't interact with as a player just so they aren't cluttering up the tracking list. There may be an exception here or there under certain situations, but they should be very, very rare.

I'm generating a list of all NPCs flagged as nontrackable right now. Most of them likely shouldn't be, so will be changed when I'm done."

Lorekeeper Blaimas, now in Plane of Knowledge, been exploring Norrath and discovered an exciting collection of experiences that allow you to have an adventure from the perspective of another creature or individual (a Monster Mission) He will provide a list of tasks to hail each mission giver for each currently available Monster Mission. The hail tasks are restricted by the same expansion check as the final missions so if you can get the hail task you should be able to accept the actual Monster Mission.

This NPC was created as a response to a repeated request on Sony Forum for something along these lines to help players locate the mission givers. At this time he doesn't tell you where the mission givers are but he does tell you which zone to look in, which is a start. Nodyin the developer will try to add a description for the locations at some point if he can.

When this bug occurs you see only sky, particles, and the UI. It often goes in and out as you rotate around, and "blanks" when facing a certain direction, like east or west. They did fix one bug that was causing this in several zones. However, it appears that there is still a remaining bug, so this thread is to get information.

As some of you know, with Auras came the risk of death due to a bug if you were on a mount and moving too quickly.

They found the problem with this code, but unfortunately it's too late to get proper testing of the fix before the next update though so for the time being please be careful of using auras and mounts at the same time.

The change is pretty deep in the collision/movement system and they say they've learned to be extremely careful about making last minute changes to these sorts of things. The code is now on the Test server. You can read more about this if you are interested here.

UPDATE: This is allegedly fixed with the patch of April 19, 2006. This blog entry will be removed shortly if this is confirmed.

∙ Targeting via clicking with mouse not working even though you are clicking right on it.

∙ Spells that won't cast or land because you are blocked by something that really doesn't seem like it should be blocking.

∙ Combat where you should be able to melee but can't see your target.

Grumbuk-Dev is working on fixing this. You can help by reporting any problems you have here. Please be sure to read his first post so you know what information is needed. Currently, there is no ETA on fixing this.

UPDATE: This is allegedly fixed with the April 19, 2006 patch. This blog entry will be removed shortly if reports agree that it is fixed.

The level 55 seems to have been designed to cure two disease counters per tick and the level 70, four counters per tick. This was reversed on release of Prophecy of Ro. Currently, Sony refuses to comment on if it was fixed. Rumor has it that it is fixed, however, there is still no comment from Sony.

The in game description of the spells is still incorrect, stating that they cure curses.

The Dain Monster Mission 3 (official name "The Defense of Thurgadin") has been changed.

"I would like to underscore that the only changes that were made to the mission involved reducing the combat effectiveness of the Dwarves at Basecamp. When fighting through the mission normally (moving the armies around the field) you shouldn't notice any changes." - Nodyin, EQ Developer

Players have complained that the mission is now too difficult. It has also been noted that the mission only drops a reward for one person out of the six who complete it. More can be read here.

Some people have noticed that their arena charm suddenly had reduced stats. This can happen if you tell Knight Champion Eddard that you would like to resume the battles from the beginning. If you do that he will reset your progress in the event and you will have to start from scratch again.

Note, this can only be done inside the instance by saying "beginning" to Eddard.

Workaround for the bug in the Key to Corruption mission in Elddar Forest.

"Currently on live there is a bug in the Elddar Forest mission "Key to Corruption" on the step where you need to find Orgaf. The problem is I moved him further away from the named orc raid because it was causing some funky agro problems having a quest giver be so close to.

If you get stuck on this until the next time we can update tasks to the live servers, you can get the update if you go to location positive 1603, negative 1435. Then run over to Orgaf who isn't to far away from that spot."

"Unfortunately I have no ETA, and will no longer be giving an ETA, nor answering questions about it (I don't have time to answer the same question over and over again, even if it is phrased differently). I will no longer say anything until the work is actually done and awaiting a patch so that I am no longer getting any hopes up.

I want to fix this. I believe it is important to fix. I have failed to convince my bosses of this. This may be my fault at not presenting my case properly. I will continue to try and get some time to fix this, as I do want to fix it."

Here is a comment from Eric Cosky - "Grumbuk", Assistant Lead Programmer, EverQuest on 12-20-2005:

"I spent some time looking into this and it does appear to be related to our low level rendering code and/or specific graphics card drivers. The crash reports I get only make it here if players don't get the blue screen of death though; is the BSoD a commonly seen crash in this specific zone (ie NV4_DISP.DLL)? That would explain why this hasn't gotten our attention sooner, these are only logged as a linkdeath from our end since a driver level crash prevents the crash report from being sent in.

Thanks for any more information you can provide, we'll get to the bottom of this soon I hope."

Nothing else has been heard on this issue since, however it was stickied by Sony in the Veterans Forum here.

The Hole Key (and the Bone Crafted Key) will go onto your keyring (hopefully) for the next update.

Here is a statement [edited] from Rainbird, EQ developer, about adding all keys to the key ring, that he posted on April 4, 2006 on the Sony forums:

"I would love for this to happen (and I'm not saying it won't). You understand it's not as easy as just changing a flag in the item database.

So until code gives me a magic code fix, the easiest thing to do is have you folks mention the keys that you would like to have added, and we can slowly tackle those one at a time. Not ideal, but really the only way it could happen at this point. Perhaps if someone wants to start another thread listing the name of the key, the key's item #, the door it goes to, the door's loc (helps us find the right switch), and we can try to work on that list. What'dda say?

Oh, and just so you know, I'm not the one who can give the approval on adding keys to the keyring. I am but a mere cog in the wheel so if there is a reason why a certain key should not be added, we'll let you know (but I can't think of a reason why not off the top of my head)."

They told me they were getting reports of double-length spawn times. They also told me they were getting reports of HALF-length spawn times!

They checked on Test, Zek, & Stromm and found Test & Zek to have the proper respawn times (20 minutes) but Stromm was at 36 minutes.

They checked the version of the data on both Zek & Stromm only to find out that they are running the same version of Data - this particular fact has us scratching our heads

So I went to code and they spent some time looking into it and couldn't figure out just what the heck would explain the difference. We are patching today/tonight [He later corrects himself. Patch will be on April 19 - ed.] I believe so I will have QA look into it after the patch - hopefully that fixes what ever is the problem.

That's all I have for now."

Update from Rainbird on April 17, 2006:

"We're one step closer to solving this issue. Code has identified what is causing the lag in Riftseekers but not the root problem. So they have a version running on their own box to see what causes that zone to enter into a bad state."